Six Boston public schools locked down as police looked for armed kidnapper
Boston Police report they are looking for a man who held up a Hyde Park market, ordered the owner into his own van and then drove it up to Egleston Square, where the thug crashed the van and the owner escaped.
Police ordered six nearby schools locked down as they looked for the robber/kidnapper - who is still at large tonight. He's described as black, about 5'7" and in his 40s. Police report what happened after the robber walked into the store with a gun:
Once in the store, according to the first victim, the suspect lead both of them to the basement of the store, and then at gunpoint ordered his co-worker to bind him. Once the first victim was bound, the suspect then directed his co-worker upstairs and left with him. The first victim was able to chew through the tape used to bind him and subsequently notified police.
The second victim reported that the suspect demanded money from him, then ordered him to lock the door to the store and ordered him into his car after forcing him to tie his co-worker. The second victim reported that he was made to drive with the suspect until he reached the intersection of Columbus Ave. and Walnut Avenue. There, he reportedly pushed the gas pedal causing the car to jerk forward striking a pole at which point he ran out of the car and made his way to a nearby bank and asked for help.
Comments
BLA(h)
Surprisingly enough, when my youngest got home from Latin Academy, he didn't mention this until I asked him. What was really surprising is that the school handled it so well that apparently the kids weren't upset. He said that the only glitch was when a teacher left her door open after instructions that they were all supposed to keep them closed. The admin folk came around, told her she blew it, and closed the door. (...nobody panic...leave that to the cops).
Robo-calls
Huzzahs to the Boston Public Schools for handling it so well.
We got an automated call from the BPS about the lockdown, even though our daughter's school wasn't affected.
Ah, you too?
We got one and I wondered whether they bothered to keep it to numbers of kids in those six schools. It might be easier for them to blanket call many thousands.
I must say though after looking at the reports, including the bpdnews one, I am incredulous that a kidnapper on the run from cops would put himself in a lot more risk of capture by invading a school or trying to snatch a kid sneaking out for a slice of pizza. I'm betting he was in Chelsea or far beyond when they locked down the schools.
If the school did not lock
If the school did not lock down, and the police did not "panic" (your words), but your child had been hurt you would screaming and yelling that the cops did not do enough to protect your kids. You cant have it both ways.
Hypotheticals
If...if...if...
Isn't that what the city and state cops did with the Mooninites? To this day, rather than admitting what nearly everyone else agrees, that it was waaaaaay overreacting, they keep up the just-doing-our-job routine.
We can hypothesize day and night, leaving common sense to sit lonely in some back room. Yeah, coulda, mighta, maybe.
That's a stretch
I'm not sure that "nearly everyone agrees" that the police (and city) over reacted to that stunt. Common sense would have prevented those idiots (and their idiot sponsors) from attaching magnetic circuitboards to bridges, which , common sense should have told them, would be mistaken by anyone who doesn't watch the Cartoon Network for bombs. The police reaction to this, frankly, was unsurprising and warranted.
External Review
Just people who live in cities that didn't freak out over them, that's all.
Boston needs to join the 21st century sometime.
Interesting Issue
I'm not sure about that. I think this event opened up an interesting issue about how people deal with things like this after 9/11. For example, neither I (a lifelong city-dweller) nor anyone I know (citydwellers all) thought that the police reaction to this was overblown. This is because all of these people's first reaction to the news reports of devices on bridges was that it was a potential terrorist event. Its wasn't some sort of panic that "oh my God we're all going to blow up" but just the potential that they were bombs was the first thing that came to everyone's mind. By contrast, your post, and the post I had commented on, suggest that this was not your initial thought - i.e. your first reaction was that this must be some sort of benign stunt. I think that's an interesting difference and would be curious to know what causes that difference. Prior to 9/11 I definately would not have immediately thought "bomb." In fact, sometime before 2001 a friend of mine who worked for the FBI in Boston once related a story to me of how he called in a bomb squad for a box on City Hall plaza in the late 1990s and I laughed at him for 10 minutes because I thought it was rediculous that "bomb" was his first thought. However, after 9/11 (which admittedly I experienced while living in DC and therefore had a somewhat "direct" reaction to) my first reaction, and the first reaction of just about everyone I know changed. Is it age, geographic location, or something else that causes the difference? By the way, I think its probably a good thing that not everyone's "first reaction switch" changed after 9/11, as it suggests that eventually we will return to a more care-free time.
9/11 was over six years ago
That doesn't mean we should forget it, but it does mean that we should all return to living our lives the way we did before it happened.
I agree
I agree with you on that. I'm not suggesting otherwise. What I'm interested in is why some people's reaction to these event (1) either never changed after 9/11 or (2) may have changed briefly but has now reverted to their original reaction. At the risk of sounding like I'm old, my sense is that it has to do with how old you were on 9/11. For example, if you were 18 and in college (and not in NY or DC) your experience of 9/11 might have been that it was something far away and not directly relevant to your life. Accordingly, your reaction to events now would be as they were then. By contrast, if you were 25 on 9/11 and working in an office building in some city, your experience of 9/11 would have been that it was something that might directly impact you immediately, and might continue to do so in the future. Therefore, your reaction to events now would different than they were before. Just my thoughts.
Why could they even put it there?
This is something that galls me and STILL galls me. Long before the artists stuck their cartoony gizmo on the bridge, I was totally annoyed that it would be way too easy to climb up above the station and wreak some havoc!
This is what happens when you 1) spend too much time waiting for late busses at Sullivan and 2)know more than a little about infrastructural vulnerabilities and 3) are also annoyed at the lack of garbage cans in the name of "security" when there are main structural components of an interstate, a subway line, and a rail link in easy reach of a loaded backpack.
The fact that these areas area STILL not secured against mooninites and plastique alike speaks volumes about Boston. Being the child of a public servent and raised in a state that is rapidly becoming the model for progressive growth, this is very frustrating. From my interactions with local city and Boston government and my husband's stints as a public school and Catholic school teacher, it leads me to certain conclusions.
Government in this region is all about the APPEARANCE of doing something, rather than the actual RESOLUTION of obvious problems. It is all about the KILLING OF THE MESSENGER in this local culture so that people wont NOTICE problems, rather than saying GEE WE HAVE A PROBLEM AND WE SHOULD FIX IT! That isn't allowed because that's criticizing the Godhead or whatever. In Boston, people who bring up problems are the problem - the problems are never a problem.
Police behavior of late, shutting down the T, etc. are, in that context, all aimed at APPEARANCE. If you haven't been outside of Boston, this looks okay because it is all you know. If you have, it just looks backward, inept, and completely ineffective as a solution.
Boston isn't as terrible as you think
Does London need to join the 21st century sometime as well? Last I visited, they still did not permit trash receptacles in the tube for fear of bombs. Have you ever lived in a city outside of the U.S.? Have you ever lived in a city in the third world? Those who live in glass houses...
Not just the trash cans ...
but the removal of trash cans as a "SEE! wE ARE DOING SOMETHING" while doing absolutely nothing about the ready access to a far more appealing target. Taking a minor but very public and easy step while a large pink elephant sits there farting is backward an ineffective.
London removes trash cans in the tube, in part, because of ciggy fires (they've been burned there too). They also monitor their sensitive areas of infrastructure with CCTV.
Finally, could you ever see four Boston cops being tried and convicted of murder for a mistaken identity massacre of an innocent citizen? Case closed.
agree with Bostonian
As one who doesn't watch Cartoon Network and had never heard of Moononites before Dumb & Dumber scattered them about the city, I have to agree with Bostonian - the police reaction was warranted. Hindsight is always 20/20.